Month: June 2015

Master Stonemason Ray Cannetti dresses a stone that will be part of the foundation of an interpretive replica of George Washington’s boyhood home being constructed at Ferry Farm in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Watch Part 1: “Splitting the Stone” here.

The George Washington Foundation is undertaking a multi-year venture to build this interpretive replica of the Washington house on its archaeological footprint. The first phase of the project will also reconstruct the kitchen, the enslaved quarters structure, and an outbuilding as well as recreate the period landscape.

Archaeologists are occasionally confronted with ‘mystery artifacts’ that either cannot be identified or have been altered to serve a purpose other than what was originally intended. Recently, in our small finds collection, we identified an artifact transformed in just such a way. Someone intentionally chipped away the edges of this 18th century leaded glass base for a cup or mug to form a disc. In addition, they also smoothed out the broken edges so they are no longer sharp.

For the moment, the object’s purpose is and, may always remain, a mystery. Use-wear on the base’s interior may hint at how it was used after alteration. Numerous scratches in the glass are present on the ‘kick up’- a small bump on the inside of the glass formed when it was hand blown.

This is not wear that typically accumulates during the life of a drinking vessel so we know the wear occurred after modification. Oddly enough, while pondering possible uses, a staff member here at Ferry Farm turned it upside down and spun the disc on the table. It whirled around perfectly like a top right where the glass exhibited the extreme wear! Take a look at this video for more detail in how the glass has been broken and smoothed and see how the modified base spins like a top.

While this is only speculation, it is possible that we are looking at an improvised toy. Perhaps a child living at Ferry Farm converted this broken glass into a toy top and played with it for many happy hours before it was lost or discarded and found its way into the archaeological record. We can only assume the child would laugh if they knew that archaeologists would be brooding over their whimsical plaything hundreds of years later.

King Lear is known far and wide as William Shakespeare’s finest tragedy but it has not always been the preferred version of the story. In part one, we saw how Shakespeare popularized the old story of King Lear by crafting a story aimed directly at Elizabethan audiences experiencing great political upheaval. In part two, we see how Shakespeare’s Lear changed to reflect the life and times of Restoration England and, ultimately, George Washington’s America.

Not long after the first printing of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the English Civil War brought a temporary end to the monarchy and closed theatres, in part, to prevent civil disorder at public gatherings. Soon, however, laws specifically targeting theatres followed as an outgrowth of Puritanical notions that saw playhouse as dens of vice, sin, and extravagance.

Playhouses’ disfavor ended in 1660 when the Restoration returned King Charles II from his exile in France and placed him on the throne as his father’s successor. Charles’s return sparked new style of theatre that boasted elegant costumes, fanciful farces, happy endings, and, for the first time in England, women on the stage! It should be no surprise that with a new king and new type of theatre, a new Lear was sure to follow.

Nahum Tate, 1652-1715. Public domain.

Enter Nahum Tate, the son of a Puritan Irish clergyman and a playwright, whose adaptation of King Lear reflected his loyalty to the crown and the Restoration’s jubilance over the monarchy’s return. The History of King Lear debuted in 1682 and brought a new take to the age-old tale. Tate felt Shakespeare’s original was “a Heap of Jewels, unstrung and unpolisht” and needed modernizing. He gave King Lear his own restoration back, removed the questioning and criticizing fool, and added a romance between Cordelia, Lear’s daughter and true heir, and Edgar, Gloucester’s son and true heir. Tate even gave Gloucester a line clearly referring to Charles’s Restoration: “Conduct me to his Knees to hail; His second Birth of Empire; my dear Edgar; Has, with himself, reveal’d the King’s blest Restauration [sic.]”

For the next 150 years, actors performed and audiences lauded Tate’s version. Not only was the happier ending preferred but Shakespeare’s work was considered like any other Elizabethan playwrights’ work, free to be changed and augmented.

Cover of Tate’s “The History of King Lear,” first performed 1862. Public domain.

Tate’s Lear was not without criticism, of course. In 1711, Joseph Addison, author of Cato (George Washington’s favorite play) lauded Shakespeare’s ability to enact poetical justice and felt that Tate’s version “had lost half its beauty,” by allowing the good to triumph. To a certain extent, Samuel Johnson agreed writing in 1765 that “The Tragedy of King Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare” even though he found Cordelia’s death so sad and tragic that “I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play.” While Johnson appreciated the Bard’s tragedy, he still preferred a lighter Lear.

David Garrick, a star of the 18th century stage, led a movement to immortalize Shakespeare as England’s national poet. He wrote a poetic eulogy about the Bard’s work at the first-ever Shakespeare festival. Surely he would prefer Shakespeare’s original text? Not quite. When Garrick staged the play and starred as a King Lear in 1756, he restored a good portion of Shakespeare’s original text but also kept Tate’s happy ending and the Cordelia/Edgar romance.

George Washington, Fielding Lewis, and other 18th century colonial Americans would have known Tate’s happier version of King Lear. American audiences would have to wait to see Tate’s version until after 1752 when the first professional actors arrived in the colonies from London. The first instance of King Lear being performed in any of the colonies comes in 1754 with a performance by Lewis Hallam’s London Company of Comedians in New York. Because so few playbills from the era have survived, this instance might not be the first time the company performed it in the colonies, but it was most certainly not the last.

This sketch of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London in 1813 — not long after it opened — gives an idea of how one of the world’s finest theaters appeared in the early 19th century. Colonial America’s theaters would not have been this elaborate. Indeed, many traveling acting companies like those that occasionally performed in Fredericksburg performed wherever they could. Performances usually took place in taverns but sometimes even in barns. Public domain.

Washington loved theatre and attended the playhouse frequently throughout his life. While Cato was his favorite play, he attended the theater whenever he could. One of the first plays he ever sees is right here in Fredericksburg. Indeed, on June 2, 1752, nineteen-year-old Washington wrote in his diary that he and his brother paid for admission to an evening of theatre. The amateur company that probably performed that evening would have most likely not have attempted a performance of Lear. Later in his life, Washington saw the London Company of Comedians by then renamed the American Company of Comedians many times including during a season in Williamsburg where Nahum Tate’s King Lear was part of their repertoire. In fact, this company of actors performed in Williamsburg during the fall of 1771. Washington and Thomas Jefferson both attended several nights in a row and the company presented Lear on November 12, 1771. We don’t know if Washington and Jefferson attended on that particular evening or if one of the other evenings also featured a performance of Lear.

Shakespeare’s Lear would have to wait until the next century to be fully restored. In 1838, William Charles Macready finally would restore Shakespeare’s text entirely, nixing the love story, bringing back the fool, and allowing Cordelia and Lear’s deaths to conclude the play.

Joe Ziarko
Manager of Interpretation & Visitor Services

See Shakespeare’s King Lear during Historic Kenmore’s Shakespeare on the Lawn. This weekend’s performances at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday or again at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday are the last chance to see the Bard’s popular, yet heartbreaking tragedy, at Kenmore this summer. Event details can be found at http://kenmore.org/events.html. See more photos from last weekend’s performances here.

King Lear (Marcus Salley – center) decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters but demands they declare how much they love him first. Goneril (Corinn Keene – far left) makes her disingenuous declaration.

Shakespeare on the Lawn returned to Historic Kenmore this past weekend with the first two performances of King Lear. Below are photos from the shows. Don’t worry if you missed this past weekend’s performances because there are two more shows this coming Saturday, June 20 and Sunday, June 21. For event details, visit http://kenmore.org/events.html.

King Lear (Marcus Salley – center) decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters but demands they declare how much they love him first. Goneril (Corinn Keene – far left) makes her disingenuous declaration.

After her false declaration of love, Lear gives Regan (Amy Wolf) her portion of the kingdom.

Youngest daughter Cordelia (Rachel Sumaray) humbly and with true love states that she loves her father as a daughter should.

Each summer. students from the University of South Florida attend a field school at George Washington’s Ferry Farm to learn practical aspects of archaeological excavations. This is what they said about their experience.

On weekdays, see Ferry Farm’s archaeologists at work on the excavation site from now through mid-June.

Just as the American Revolution started, Lawrence moved into Kenmore with his parents and siblings when he was eight years old. Sadly, the move to the new house began a devastating chapter for the family that saw the loss of their financial security and, ultimately, of their patriarch. Lawrence witnessed the toll that financing and supporting the War for Independence exacted on his father. For the Patriot cause, Fielding provided much needed supplies to the army, bought and built ships for the navy, and funded a musket factory with his own money. After all these sacrifices, Fielding died in 1781 when Lawrence was fourteen.

Fielding bequeathed his ninth child “one thousand acres of land in the County of Frederick [this land was near Bath, Virginia, which is now Berkeley Springs, West Vriginia] on which my overseer Butler now lives as surveyed by Mr. Berry with the one sixth part of all my negroes.”

Instead of going west, however, Lawrence struck out east. By 1790, the twenty-three year old was living in Essex County and awaiting the birth of his first child with his wife Susannah Edmonton. Sadly, Susannah and the child died in labor. After this devastating death, Lawrence disappears from the historic records until four years later.

In 1794, Lawrence volunteered for military service and served as aide-de-camp to General Daniel Morgan in western Pennsylvania during the Whiskey Rebellion. [2] This rebellion was led by western farmers in response to the tax on all domestically-produced distilled spirits. This was the first time the newly formed government, under the leadership of Lawrence’s Uncle Washington, who was now President of the United States, imposed a tax on a domestic product. A destructive uprising was avoided and the tax was eventually repealed under Thomas Jefferson but the event led to the formation of America’s first political parties. [3][4][5]

President George Washington reviews troops near Fort Cumberland, Maryland, before their march to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. Unknown, attributed to Frederick Kemmelmeyer – Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.

After Washington retired from the presidency, he began looking for a personal secretary and offered the position to Lawrence.

“I require some person (fit & Proper) to ease me of the trouble of entertaining company…and for a little time only, to come, an hour in the day, now and then, devoted to the recording of some Papers which time would not allow me to complete before I left Philadelphia.”[6]

Lawrence became part of the Washington household at Mount Vernon assisting his uncle with his entertaining, correspondence, and day-to-day activities. Also residing at Mount Vernon was Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Martha. Eleanor and her brother George had been informally adopted by the Washingtons after the death of their father. Two years after arriving at his uncle’s house, Lawrence and Eleanor married on February 22, 1799.

Obviously fond of his nephew and step-granddaughter, Washington enjoyed having them near Mount Vernon. Shortly before his death, he offered Lawrence and Nelly a large tract of land. Washington made it known that he wanted them to start enjoying the property immediately and not wait for his death.

“But, as it has been understood from expressions occasionally dropped from your wife, that it is the wish of you both to settle in the neighborhood…I shall inform you, that in the will which I have by me …that part of my Mount Vernon tract…is bequeathed to you and her jointly, if you incline to build on it.”[7]

Sadly, George died a few months after he made the offer of land to the couple and never got to enjoy his nephew’s family living so near.

Lawrence and Eleanor started building their home, now known as Woodlawn, in 1800. The house was completed five years later and designed by William Thornton, the same architect who designed the U.S. Capitol. Owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Alexandria, Virginia, you can visit Woodlawn as well as the 20th century Pope-Leighey House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The two houses provide a great juxtaposition between a classical Federal house of straight lines and proportion and a modern Usonian home that exudes simplicity and nature.[8] Lawrence and Nelly raised their eight children and lived peacefully at Woodlawn until 1830.

Pope-Leighey House. Photo Courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Lawrence Lewis died on November 20, 1839 at the age of 72 and was buried close to George and Martha in the vault at Mount Vernon. His wife Eleanor passed away in 1852 and was placed next to her husband and much loved adopted grandparents.